Perverse incentives

Following on from the article in The Sunday Times last weekend, The Economist has an article in this week's edition, Perverse incentives, that factories in China are ramping up the production of some of the worst greenhouse gases for financial gain. In this case they are producing HFC-23, which is 11,700 times more potent than CO2 and slated for elimination by the Montreal protocol, so that they can later reduce their emissions and sell the CO2 equivalent credits back to EU companies. It's estimated that this will make the Chinese companies approximately $6.4 bln when the cost of capturing the gas is only around $140m. And, of course, does the planet no good in the meantime.

What this requires is that the replacement for the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012, needs to be rather more savvy in understanding that the world is full of unscrupulous people who will quite happily destroy the planet for a quick buck. As The Economist itself points out, the real focus needs to be on reducing carbon emissions from power generation as it is by far the largest polluter.

Carbon trading & clean technology

There was a story over the weekend in the Sunday Times which grabbed my interest and has made me reconsider my greenness. In an attempt to be carbon neutral I have planted trees, joined BP's Target Neutral scheme and a variety of other offset schemes to reduce my carbon footprint. But as the article highlights, and I've kind of suspected, these offset schemes are more for green PR and salving consciences than really doing anything helpful to save the planet. Please let me know, by the way, if I'm mistaken in believing this.

In the end, I think that we in the West are just going to have to use less fossil fuels. My hope lies in clean technologies and to this end I have been making some investments in this area over the last couple of years and I plan to explore the technologies and some of the companies involved in future posts. It's noticeable too that magazines like Red Herring are starting to look at this sector on a regular basis which says two things to me. First that Americans aren't all the climate change Neanderthals that they are made out to be in the European press and secondly that there's money to be made in stopping climate change - and I think that's a great thing. I know that many on the green left would shudder at the idea but I think the best hope for the world is if we can profitably invest in making the world a better place rather than a worse one.

New blog for my postings on Clean Tech

Hi,

I will be moving all my posts on clean tech and environmental issues to this blog over the coming days. Sorry for any confusion.

Angus